It hadn’t seemed wise to Jill to go back inside, since Mr Truth might be waiting to ambush her, so instead she decided to keep exploring the outside of the ship. The two girls had gone toward the rim, so she went in toward the centre. Lower gravity was more fun anyway, once she got over the nausea of it.

There were more stretches of metal closer in, so she could walk up walls, the magnetised soles of her suit holding on for her. As she got closer, gravity became progressively weaker, until she could leap from one terrace to another.

She reached toward the great exhaust pipe at the very centre of the ship, ten times wider than her spread arms. It was surrounded by sensor dishes, probably intended to monitor its output in case the internals had problems.

By this point, gravity had practically vanished, and the lightest push could send her drifting to wherever she wanted to go. She spotted a toolbox tethered to one dish and pushed herself toward it, catching hold of the tether and wrapping one leg to hold on around the dish. She’d hit the jackpot: in addition to a pile of random spanners and drills, it contained what looked like a rigid backpack with rows of exhaust nozzles on the back, and wires leading to black strap-on gloves. She untied the tether from the toolbox and looped it round her ankle, then put on the backpack and gloves and tightened them.

For a minute, she couldn’t figure out how to get it to work, but then, in irritation, she clenched her fists, and one of the nozzles blew air and pushed her against the tether, sending her spinning. She caught herself and took a moment to get reoriented, then tried again, squeezing the gloves, and the jetpack came to life again. She spent a few minutes getting used to it, figuring out the controls. She gradually worked out that it moved her in the direction of wherever her hands were when she made fists, so she could fly forward with a Superman pose or put her hands to her hips to brake. When she put them to one side, it began yawing her that way. When she put them apart or crossed them over, the jetpack began pitching or rolling, which was nauseous and less helpful than the designer thought.

She untied the tether and kicked against the ship’s engine exhaust pipe, letting herself drop off the ship and drift through space, focusing on the unique sensation of weightlessness, the way that there was no longer gravity to press her organs against each other, only achievable on Earth by freefall. The ship seemed to spin faster and faster as she approached the rim, until finally she cleared it and could see the side of the ship. It had the same patchwork appearance of shiny chromed metal, cattle grid catwalks, irregular chunks of rock, and sensors and other technological apparatuses. She activated the jetpack and flew along beside it.

The ship was much wider than it was long; she reckoned it was a few kilometres across, but only about fifty metres long. After that, there was a small gap and then a second disk, this one not rotating. She caught onto an antenna and sat on it, thinking about how unusual it was to be able to rest on something that clearly couldn’t take her weight.

On this side of the ship were protrusions that looked like gigantic mushrooms, which she recognised as the scoops. They used electrostatics to draw in passing dust and rocks, before filters brought them down and onto the ship for processing. She watched for a minute, when suddenly there was a crash that shook the ship and knocked her off the antenna. She spun in space; on reflex, she made fists, and the jetpack helpfully caught her. Perhaps it wasn’t so badly designed after all. She looked back at the ship.

In space, explosions are visible in slow motion, as debris floats away from the epicentre, everything from deadly bits of high-speed shrapnel to lazy pieces of scrap. Jill could see that something had hit the ship hard, probably a meteoroid, and knocked a fair amount of material loose. Some of it curved through space to be caught by the scoops, but some flew away from the ship, and she was fairly sure some of that was machinery from the ship. She noticed that there were no scoops near the point of impact, and that the scoops were in fact very unevenly distributed across the ship’s surface. As she watched, one began retracting. She activated the jetpack again and flew over for a better look. The scoop neatly folded itself up like origami and slid along tracks into a chute.

Why are the scoops withdrawing when they already aren’t catching everything?

She flew closer and landed on the top of the scoop, riding it down into the chute. A hatch closed above her, and suddenly it was pitch black. The scoop kept going along the track long enough for her air to become stale, and she began to feel she might have made a big mistake, when an airlock closed overhead and the room pressurised. She pulled off her helmet.

“Hello?” she called.

Without warning, gravity began rapidly increasing to normal, pressing her down onto the scoop; she staggered and awkwardly turned the motion into sitting down, glad that nobody had seen it. The scoop presently began sliding along on something like a conveyor belt; a minute later, it pushed out through a rubber flap into what looked like a loading bay. It was full of crates and machinery, lit by red LEDs. A man was busy typing commands into a laptop on table. He stopped and stared at her.

“Hello,” she said again.

“… Hey,” said Jason, too surprised to think of anything else.

“I was out spacewalking,” Jill said, “and I saw parts of the ship being removed. So I followed one down here.”

“Uh-huh,” he said.

“What exactly are you doing with these?”

“Routine maintenance.”

Jill got to her feet, still standing atop the scoop. From her vantage point, she could see multiple others sitting around the loading bay. “You don’t ‘routinely maintain’ half the ship’s defences at once. You do one or two, so there’s still enough to catch everything, and we don’t keep getting pummelled, then cycle those ones back in and do the next batch. You, my friend, are dismantling it. What are you, a space pirate?”

“A space – don’t be stupid,” he said. “Look, this ship is nowhere near on course, and it doesn’t have the fuel to get anywhere any time soon. Whatever went wrong with navigation, nobody has any idea how to fix it. I’m scavenging enough to make a second smaller ship, giving it the bare minimum it needs, and launching that. It should be light enough to get to a star system nearby.”

She ran her tongue over her teeth. “Is that why you’re here? You’re sick of the journey; you want it to be over already?”

“I want to have a life,” he said. “That’s not happening any time soon, not the way things are.”

She smiled, musing. “Stop wandering aimlessly, and finally just arrive. I guess I can sympathise. If I didn’t have these diversions to keep me sane, and if I even knew where I wanted to go or what I wanted, I’d be tempted to do the same sort of thing.” She took a deep breath, let it out. “Still, I can’t let you take the scoops. They’re the only things stopping space debris from blasting this ship to dust.”

“There are repair systems,” he replied. “They can keep it intact.”

“They can’t when they get hit too.”

“Look,” he said. “This ship is dead in the water, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. So you can sit here for the rest of your life until the cryochambers all fail, or we can make an escape ship. Hey, do you want to come with me? I could use some company.”

“That’s only possible by leaving everyone else on this ship defenceless,” she said. “You’re effectively taking the entire ship for yourself and jettisoning the passengers. Thanks, but no thanks. Now put these back.”

He sized her up. He wasn’t in good shape and didn’t really know how to fight, but he was male and therefore probably much stronger. On the other hand, she had a jetpack and the confidence of someone who wasn’t afraid of anyone. Either way, he’d rather not take the risk if he didn’t have to.

“Maybe we can –” he began.

Jill’s eyes widened. She did a backward roll off the scoop, a moment before a bullet ricocheted off it and into an overhead cable; a section of catwalk clattered to the floor. Jason turned. At the hallway hatch was a giant of a man in a business suit, holding a smoking Uzi.

“I told you to stay out of my way,” Mr Truth called out.

Jill pressed her back to the scoop’s stalk and looked around for a weapon, an exit, or something else she could use. She was fairly sure the jetpack wouldn’t support her weight in full gravity. “Would you believe me if I said I was actually trying to save the ship, that this has nothing to do with you?”

“Oh, here we go,” Jason muttered.

“I wouldn’t,” said Truth. “Not when you’re right next to my ship.”

“That’s probably because there’s only one docking bay,” she said.

“Mmhmm. I also don’t really care. You’re still in my way.”

“I’m not your top priority right now,” she said. “This guy’s cannibalising this ship for parts. It’ll kill everyone on board.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Jason said.

“Are you taking this ship apart?” Truth asked.

“Well, yes, but not like she said.”

“Destroy it.”

“Wait, what?”

“I only have one objective,” said Truth, “and I’m not letting her get away. A second ship is a way she could escape from me. So destroy it. I’m not going to ask again.”

“Whoa whoa whoa, this is way too valuable to destroy,” said Jason. “We could get an entire planet of our own with it! A third of a planet each way. Or half, because that girl doesn’t want in. There’s no way –”

There came three quick gunshots and a thump. Jill swallowed, her heart racing.

Truth’s footsteps clunked on the metal floor. “You can run for the door if you want,” he said conversationally. “In fact, you might actually be useful to me. You probably know where the girl is, don’t you? I could comb through this entire ship again looking for her, but Tchaipross doesn’t pay by the hour. You can find her and bring her to me.”

“Why would I do that?” Jill asked.

“Why not?” he asked reasonably. “Do you have anything better to do?”

“Are you just a full-on crazy supervillain who doesn’t understand that people don’t do things for you when they don’t like you, or am I missing something?”

“Villain?” he repeated. “To you, maybe. Look at it this way. I’m going to find her, sooner or later. Do you want to be rid of me sooner or later? I promise I’ll leave you alone once I have her. I’m a professional; I don’t damage things or people that aren’t in my way.”

She said nothing.

“You seem to need extra motivation,” he said.

He pressed a button by the loading bay. It beeped, and a blast door began closing, isolating the boxes that Jason had loaded from the rest of the room. Before it completed the motion, he tossed in something like a wad of putty with a metal rod stuck inside. He pulled a remote from a pocket and pressed it. There was another beep, and a blast tossed Jill against the scoop.

She sat against it, dazed, while Mr Truth walked around and offered her a hand. She weakly took it, and he easily pulled her to her feet. She gradually became aware that a siren was going off.

“It sounds like that made a few minor hull breaches,” he said. “If you can get her here before the ship completely depressurises, I’ll let you come with us.”

“Nngh,” she said, her ears ringing. “You …”

“Will you stay, or go?” he asked. He still had his gun in hand.

She turned and staggered out.